All atwitter

Saturday, January 3, 2009

All you people that were recently so excited about Google's launch of their Checkout payment service, I have to disappoint you. A more careful read of their terms of service reveal that they forbid the usage of service for the sale of following goods & services (liberally abridged list from here ):

Academic paper-writing and test-taking services

Adult goods and services

Alcohol

Animals and regulated species

Copyright unlocking devices or techniques

Copyright media and software

Counterfeit and unauthorized goods

Drugs and drug paraphernalia

Government IDs, documents, or uniforms

Gaming/gambling

Human parts

Illegal telecommunications equipment

Offensive goods, among them: items that contravene public morality

Prescription drugs and medical devices

Pyrotechnic devices and hazardous materials

Tobacco and cigarettes

Travel packages and offers

Weapons

What can I say, they sure have most fun things covered... so if you were planning, in order of appearance, to have your Masters thesis finished up for you by that Ph.D. from Yakutsk, and then head off for an erotically charged vacation in a casino on a fake Venezuelan passport while loaded with Grant's brandy, cuban cigars, Vicodine and crack, clad in cheetah fur coat and chewing whale bladder candy, -- I'm afraid you can't have it all paid for through Google Checkout.

By the way, sorry Enrico, I guess our deal regarding my left kidney is also off.

Friends

How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?" — was that it? — "I prefer men to cauliflowers" — was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace — Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished-how strange it was! — a few sayings like this about cabbages.